Boardwalk Empire risks returning to its old plot tricks

Boardwalk Empire, Season 3 risks returning to its old plot tricks

Boardwalk Empire, the Prohibition-era drama with an assortment of killers in bowlers, bow ties and saddle shoes, had a simple thread running through its first two seasons: would Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi), corrupt politician, booze smuggler and unofficial king of Atlantic City, become the upstanding man he seemed to want to be?

“You can’t be half a gangster, Nuck,” his protégé, Jimmy Darmody, advised when the series opened. Nucky, who had resisted the idea of becoming all a gangster, finally took Darmody’s advice at the end of Season 2 — and aced poor Jimmy in the process.

It was quite the slate-cleaning moment. Showrunner Terence Winter compared it, in an interview with the TV critic Alan Sepinwall last year, to a “stick of dynamite” approach to plotting. Darmody (Michael Pitt) had set himself up as a rival to Nucky, eventually deciding that he wanted to make amends, and as the season closed it could have gone in two directions: a reconciliation, with everything back the way it was in the early part of Season 1, or the stick of dynamite approach. They went with kablooey.

Season 3, as one might expect, begins with what feels much like a new pilot episode. It is Dec. 31, 1922, in a none-too-subtle nod to the rebirth angle, and Nucky and his wife, Margaret (Kelly Macdonald) are hosting a smashing party at their Atlantic City home. Before the night is out, Nucky will have made a new enemy in the form of Gyp Rosetti (Bobby Cannavale), a Sicilian from New York who is aggrieved at having been cut off from Nucky’s supply of rum. (An earlier expository scene establishes that, even among these bespoke suit death merchants, Rosetti is particularly hot-tempered and dangerous. He’s reminiscent of the Javier Bardem character in No Country for Old Men; you could absolutely see the New York mobster deciding someone’s fate on the basis of a coin flip.)

Al Capone, meanwhile, is back in Chicago, and starting a vendetta of his own with Dean O’Banion (Arron Shiver), an Irish-American gangster who doesn’t show him the proper respect. Al, still mostly a hair-trigger goofball, figures to eventually become more of central character in the cast, particularly now that his pal Jimmy has been removed.

And Agent Van Alden (Michael Shannon), now former agent Van Alden, is beginning his new life as a door-to-door salesman, which aside from being a step down from his initial role as Nucky’s relentless pursuer, is a job for which he is spectacularly ill-suited. Honestly, he’s a puritan giant with a menacing glare and a dislike for small talk: would you buy an iron from this man?

Almost as awkward as watching Van Alden attempt friendly banter with housewives is his effort to pull off jocular wit among fellow salesman. When he tries to force a smile, it is as though his face will break. One can only hope that circumstances will eventually cause Rosetti and Van Alden to cross paths — the staredown between those two would be something to behold.

The early episodes of Season 3, though, suggest the writers are taking a while to figure out what to do with the clean slate. Yes, the new rivalries figure to end in violence sooner rather than later, but we have been there and done that. Twenty-five episodes into a series is rather late to be going back to the plot devices of its earliest days, which is what it feels like when, for example, Nucky’s men are arranging a shipment of alcohol to New York that may or may not be ambushed.

That said, Boardwalk is a series that has mastered the art of the showdown — the wonderfully crafted scenes that end in either bloodshed or grudging detente. They happen just enough, with varying results, that the viewer can’t know what to expect. And on this score, the series delivers early with a couple of new gems, including one between Capone and O’Banion that is resolved by an unexpected intruder. Rare is the scene that turns from menace to comedy so effortlessly.

Nucky is involved in a few such scenes himself, which makes sense since he’s more of the lead than ever before. He’s fully a gangster now, a decision that pushed him away from Margaret, the woman who almost made a good man of him. So he knows what he is. But he doesn’t seem happy about it.